


shorelines (or, four times asami sato didn't leave, and one time she did)

by nirav



Series: new worlds for the weary [1]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 10:10:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3130709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirav/pseuds/nirav
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her father’s rage burns in her veins, but so does his unwavering devotion to the woman he loves and it’s as hard to walk away from Korra as it is easy to love her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_When I say that I love you_

_I guess what I mean is that I love you like a home I have to leave_

 

It’s been two years to the day since Asami electrocuted her father. One year, ten months, six days since he was sentenced to life in prison. One year, ten months, five days since the extent of his betrayal, his fury, his weakness seeped into her dreams and settled heavily in her bones.

 

One year, ten months, four days since she etched _I am not my father_ into the wood of the desk in the penthouse office of Future Industries, dead center and hidden forever under the mound of paperwork that inheritance and industry produced. One year, ten months, three days since the first harrowing stress of doubt in such things curled through her veins.

 

Two hours since she and Korra were transported into an airship prison, bound for the Earth Queen and her boundless rage. Two minutes since she broke free and Korra watched her, hopeful and open and _trusting_ , even as she stood there bound and chained and gagged.

 

What Hiroshi Sato wouldn’t have given to have the Avatar, helpless and alone, in front of him.

 

Asami shakes her head, blinks, and starts prying her way through the floorboards. She isn’t her father, even if she shares his blood. This is Korra, her best friend, the Avatar, the hero the world needed, depending on her. This is _Korra_.

 

She hovers around the corner from the cell she’d broken free of, eyeballing the guard and waiting for Korra to distract him. Her skin hums and the leather of her gloves creaks when she clinches her fists, and her mind plays through the six ways she knows to kill him even in handcuffs. It would be easy, simple, deserved-- they locked Korra up like a _dog_ , carting her off to a pompous--

 

Korra’s voice cuts through the quiet rage buzzing in Asami’s ears, and it’s enough to ground her. Knocking the guard out is easy, easier even than killing him. She hesitates, one foot hovering over his bared throat. She’s known how to kill a man since she was twelve years old, her father hiring more and more ruthless instructors to assure she was never, ever left helpless.

 

Instead, she yanks the keys from his belt and shoulders her way through the door, hitching one side of her mouth up into a smirk for Korra to see.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s been sixteen hours since she almost crushed the throat of an Earth Kingdom guard, and she and Korra are waiting anxiously for Mako and Bolin in a ratty hotel room, sequestered off to rest from the desert at the insistence of Korra’s father.

 

Korra paces, frustration and concern tightening her muscles and clenching her jaw. Asami watches from her spot on the lumpy couch. There’s a bed, but the blankets are covered in old stains; she wouldn’t even touch it to remove it. She folds her arms over her chest and her fingers brush against the dark sprocket embroidered on her sleeve. Her heartbeat stumbles for a moment, and she bites down on the inside of her cheek and redoubles her focus on counting Korra’s steps.

 

“You need to sleep,” she points out eventually.

 

“I’m fine,” Korra says, even as she noticeably swallows a yawn.

 

“Korra,” Asami says. She scoots over, opening up more space on the couch. “Come on. Sit down, get some rest.”

 

“I-- okay,” Korra mumbles. She flops down on the couch, broad shoulders taking up extra space like they always do, pressing up against Asami’s. “Just for a few minutes.”

 

“Just a few,” Asami says, shifting and curling up into the corner of the couch. She props her chin in her hand and watches Korra, who slumps even more languidly into the cushions as her eyes drift shut. Within minutes she’s asleep, breaths even and quiet.

 

Asami stares at her profile, and she reaches out to touch the abrasions just below Korra’s jaw, left from the rough leather she had tried to twist her way out of before Asami broke them out. Anger settles in her bones, familiar and warm, and she pulls her hand back, digging nails into her own knee to stop a fist from forming. She would have killed the guard if Korra hadn’t stopped her, unknowingly or not.

 

_I am not my father_.

 

Maybe she is.

 

It’s her turn to pace, leaving Korra asleep and sprawling into the empty space where Asami had been as the hours crawl past. The soft edges of sunrise start filtering through the covered windows, and Asami is raises her chin from where it’s been sitting on her knees. She hasn’t moved in over an hour, her eyes locked on Korra’s sleeping form. Korra will wake soon; Tenzin’s determination to turn her into a sunrise meditator was at least half successful.

 

It’s been twenty hours since she considered killing a man.

 

_I am not my father_.

 

It’s been two hours since she decided to leave. Ninety minutes since she paused, sat, stared. Just five minutes, she’d told herself. Her father’s rage burns in her veins, but so does his unwavering devotion to the woman he loves and it’s as hard to walk away from Korra as it is easy to love her. Leaving, walking away with the hateful instincts her father gifted her, is the right thing to do, but she carries just as much of his weaknesses, and it weighs her down, tethering her to Korra.

 

_I am not my father_.

 

Outside there’s the clatter of the first carts rolling down the street to the morning market, and Asami doesn’t move, but Korra startles awake with a grumble.

 

“What time is it?” she mumbles the question into the couch cushion, squinting against the sunlight.

 

“Early,” Asami says quietly. “Go back to sleep, I’ll wake you in a few hours.”

 

“Why are you on the floor?”

 

“I left to go to the bathroom and you took over the couch.” Asami forces a lilt into her lie, tugging her mouth up into a smile.

 

“Sorry,” Korra says. She’s already slipping back into sleep. “Just five more minutes.”

 

“Five minutes.”

 

“You know.” Sleep rounds out the edges of Korra’s voice, and she sounds younger than Asami’s ever known her. “If I had to get kidnapped and stranded in the desert with someone, I’m glad it was you. But don’t tell Mako, he’ll get jealous.”

 

She’s asleep before Asami can formulate a response. Leaving is built into Asami’s genetic code-- be it unintentional, like her mother, or in a deliberate descent into fury and prejudice, like her father-- but not yet. She can stay for this, for Korra, for the teenager carrying them all on her shoulders.

 

_I am not my father_.

 

Maybe she won’t be.


	2. Chapter 2

_And I cross my heart and hope to die_

_Unless I happen to lie_

 

These are the promises she’s made:

 

  *      she will not be her father, full of hate and fire and fury
  *      she will not be a child, weak and afraid and clinging to safety
  *      she will rebuild her name and her company, by roads, by neighborhoods, by shelters and orphanages and free schools
  *      she will love Korra from a distance, burning the letters that are too despondent and focusing on her work instead of a girl in the south pole, shackled to immobility by her own body



 

She makes her promises, carves them angrily into the pages of her sketchbook, reads them every morning and every night. Her place is here, in Republic City, where she can actually _help_. Her father helped tear this world apart, but she can knit it back together. Zaheer practically cleaved Korra in two, binding her to the poison that swallowed her legs, her smile, her hope. Asami cannot put Korra back together, and she’s promised to let Korra heal on her own.

 

She’s made the promise every day since Korra decided to leave--

 

_“I’m going to go stay with my parents,” she said, and her voice was quiet, dull; it fell flat into the ascetic hardwood floors of the Air Temple._

 

_Asami paused, her fingers still in Korra’s hair. “Okay,” she said. She gripped Korra’s shoulder for a moment, fingers twitching for a moment, before returning to untangling Korra’s hair. “Do you want me to come with you?”_

 

_“No,” Korra said, and Asami swallowed her hurt, glad she was out of Korra’s sight as she winced._

 

_“Okay,” Asami said again. She finished brushing Korra’s hair and sorted it into the familiar blue wraps easily. Her body rebelled for long moments, not allowing her to move, before she shifted to kneel in Korra’s eye line. “You do what you need to. We’ll all still be here when you get back. Promise.”_

 

_“Thanks,” Korra said, and she smiled, if only for a moment._

 

_“And if you change your mind,” Asami said, flippant and easy and not at all like her chest had already hollowed out at Korra’s absence. “I’m only an airship ride away. I could always use a vacation.”_

 

_“Right,” Korra said, and her shoulders slumped even more than normal. Asami’s smile, fake but valiant, dropped, and she wrapped her hands around Korra’s._

 

_“Korra,” she said quietly. “You don’t owe anyone anything. You take the time you need, and come home when you’re ready.” She bit down on her tongue when Korra’s hand moved between hers, fingers twitching tiredly to settle between Asami’s._

 

_“Okay,” Korra said. Asami reached for her, fingers brushing against her cheek for the briefest of moments, and Korra flinched, relaxed, turned into the touch. “It’s not forever. I’ll come back. I promise.”_

 

_“Come home when you’re ready. I’ll be waiting,” Asami promised._

 

\--and she’s kept it as long as she can. Weeks have gone by, and then months, and two years turns into two and a half as Republic City settles into itself once more, a healing but energetic hive humming with energy that Asami built, circling the statue of Korra that Asami and Bolin and Mako and Tenzin and even _Lin_ had fought Raiko for. She’s kept her promise, holding her love at a distance and waiting for Korra to come home and just _waiting_ for Korra, faithful and alone, right up until Tonraq and Senna appear without Korra.

 

She breaks, but not until she’s home and alone and in the privacy of her own workshop. She breaks, because she’d built Korra’s return into a fantasy of running hugs and easy touches, heartfelt admissions and honest reciprocations; because she knows she had no reason to do so; because she’s alone and Korra is lost and all she has is wilting friendships and a city that will take everything she offers and more because the Sato blood in her veins.

 

Morning comes, and she wakes up curled into a corner of her workshop. Her back aches, a comforting counterpoint to the disappointment burning in her chest, because Korra is still not home.

 

She showers and dresses and walks into the office with her chin up. She clears her schedule, puts in a call to have her airship prepped, and starts stalking through the collection of newspaper clippings detailing Avatar sightings from the last year-- a joke, she’d told herself, something that would make Korra laugh when she came home-- to plot a route.

 

She’s mapped her first four destinations and is searching for a tabloid interview with an Earth Kingdom policeman who swore that he’d seen the Avatar try and fail to apprehend two common criminals when a crumpled sheet of paper falls out from the newspaper clippings, heavy and wrinkled and almost torn along the refolded creases. Korra’s handwriting-- still all careful clean lines, like a child, but smaller, weaker, the pen so obviously not always pressed fully into the page-- winks up at her as the paper flutters down onto her desk.

 

It’s enough to make her stop, and she reaches for the letter.

 

_It’s easier to tell you this stuff_.

 

She stares down at the letter, reading through lines she memorized six months ago, and presses a hand over her mouth.

 

_I’ll be waiting_.

 

Asami sets the letter down carefully. She promised Korra she would wait, and she promised herself she would hold her love for a time when it wouldn’t add to the countless pieces of ballast dragging Korra down.

 

She crumples up the map she’d plotted her trip on, cancels the airship preparations, and sets her assistant to rescheduling that day’s meetings.

 

She will stay, and she will wait, and Korra will come home.

 


	3. Chapter 3

_No light, no light in your bright blue eyes_

_I never knew daylight could be so violent_

_A revelation in the light of day_

_You can't choose what stays and what fades away_

 

“You did _what_?”

 

“I-- I’m sorry,” Korra says, but her voice lilts up like a question, an uncertainty, and it siphons the meaning out of her apology. “I just wanted to make sure--”

 

“Make sure, what, exactly?” She’s never yelled at Korra before, not like this, and they’ve only been back together for three days and the failures in her genes are already bubbling up between them.

 

“To make sure he wasn’t going to hurt you again!” Korra’s eyes are bright and flashing with anger, but it’s so much quieter than it once was, an empty depth hovering dark behind her temper, as if she left her self-confidence swimming in Toph’s swamp.

 

Asami slumps down in a chair, dropping her forehead into her hands. The bright sunlight cutting through the oversized window in Korra’s new room-- on the opposite side of the Air Temple as her old one-- makes her eyes ache.

 

“You had no right,” she says into her hands. On the other side of the room, Korra shifts, and even with her eyes shut against the violently bright sunlight Asami can see the discomfort in her stance. “Korra, I told you I was going to see him because I wanted you to know, as my friend, but that doesn’t give you the right--”

 

“He hurt you! You think I never noticed you running yourself into the ground trying to make up for everything he did?”

 

“What, you saw all that in the _years_ when you were gone?” It’s unfair and cruel and Asami finally looks up, one hand clapped over her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.

 

“It’s fine,” Korra mutters. “But I went to talk to him to make sure he wasn’t playing another game. To make sure he wasn’t going to hurt you.”

 

“He can’t hurt me anymore, Korra, he’s in prison!”

 

“When has that stopped it?” Korra says, throwing her hands up. “What did you carve into your desk your first day in his office, Asami?”

 

“Shut up,” Asami snaps. “Shut _up_.”

 

“You’re my best friend,” Korra says, quiet and defeated and so tired that Asami has to blink, shake her head, remind herself that Korra is standing again, Korra is the Avatar again, Korra isn’t withering away in a wheelchair. “I wanted to protect you.”

 

“I’m not yours to protect.” It’s a lie, it’s the biggest lie she’s ever told, and they both know it, the mutual acknowledgment of it spreading in the empty air between them. “You don’t get to choose who I talk to or when or how I decide to move forward with my life.”

 

“I know,” Korra says. “I’m not-- that’s-- I was just _worried_.”

 

Asami is quiet, and she busies herself with rolling up the blueprints she’d been working on-- just five minutes ago, quiet and comfortable on the floor in Korra’s room as Korra moved slowly through air bending stances-- and sliding them into cases and gathering her papers.

 

“Asami,” Korra says.

 

“I’m going home,” Asami says shortly.

 

“Asami,” Korra says again. She reaches for Asami, one hand wrapping around her wrist, and Asami flinches because there are scars on Korra’s palms that hadn’t been there before she was poisoned, rough patches of tissue healed over from chains that cut into her skin and mercury that pushed further into her. She’s seen them, when they were first healing, watching as healers did what they could to knit skin and muscle back together, convincing herself that in time, Korra would no longer have scars that reached from her palms to her elbows.

 

“Please don’t leave,” Korra says. Her grip is loose on Asami’s wrist, giving her an easy way out, and Asami inhales slowly.

 

“I’m not a child,” she says after long moments, and finally turns back to face Korra. “I’m not someone you get to coddle. We’ve all been hurt, and it fades or it stays or it does what it will, but you don’t get to-- to go behind my back and talk to my father about me.”

 

“You can’t stop me from protecting you,” Korra says, quiet and firm. “I won’t stop.”

 

“I know,” Asami says with a sigh. “And I-- I do appreciate you having my back, and I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

 

Korra shrugs, the movement tugging at Asami’s wrist, and offers a smile. It’s easy and lopsided and familiar, and Asami doesn’t bother stopping herself from stepping forward and hugging Korra tightly. Her hands curl up around Korra’s shoulder blades and her whole body shudders when Korra’s forehead presses into her neck.

 

“I’m sorry for going behind your back,” Korra mumbles. Her breath flutters past Asami’s jacket. “Now will you please not leave?”

 

Asami clings to the material covering Korra’s back, the shift of muscle underneath familiar and warm and comforting. “Okay,” she says.

 


	4. Chapter 4

_What if I could die now_

_What if I could go_

_I always loved alone_

_I never ever showed_

 

In the years since she crashed into Korra’s life, through battles and wars and recoveries, Asami has never given up on Korra. She’s held herself as strong as she could, kept her heart ready and hands busy, and waited waited _waited,_ every time, because Korra has always come back to her.

 

When the city explodes and a portal rips through the spirit wilds, light tearing through buildings and violently cleaving a crater into the earth; when the world eats itself alive in purple and heat and dust-- then, Asami wavers and crumples and gives up.

 

She wanders with the others to the new portal. No one but Korra could have caused this, and if she’s alive-- _if_ \-- then she’ll be there waiting for them, pointing excitedly at the new bridge she’s made, bouncing around with her dirty clothes and crooked smile and--

 

The crater is empty. Jinora and Ikki and Meelo are darting in and out of the only signs of life, searching the wrecked torso and head of Kuvira’s metal giant, but they come back into view empty handed and dejected every time.

 

Asami presses her hands against her chest, holding her heartbeat steady, as Tenzin insists they keep looking. Her whole body hurts-- the seat ejection mechanism was shoddy at best, and her ribs are bruised, maybe cracked, and her ribcage collapses in on itself with every breath-- and her legs shake as she wanders through the wreckage. She clenches her teeth together, trying and trying and trying to will her faith in Korra to weather this as always, but she’s just so _tired_ and her faith wavers and implodes just like her ribs.

 

She always worried that Korra would die like this, heroic and exquisite and too young.

 

Her throat burns as she swallows around the sob trying to push its way out of her chest. They’ll all mourn Korra, friend and family and Avatar, together, but she loved Korra alone and at her own distance, and she’ll grieve her the same way, alone in her empty home.

 

The search is winding down, battle-torn benders and confused soldiers in mechasuits wandering around aimlessly without their leaders, and Asami quietly turns her back on the portal, looking tiredly to the long walk home she has ahead of her.

 

She’s just passed Tenzin when the light from the portal brightens, casting a long shadow from her slumped shoulders, and she pauses, looking back in spite of herself, just in time to see spirits sliding out of the bright beam of light.

 

“The spirits have returned,” Tenzin says, and his back straightens a little bit more. They may have lost Korra, but the legacy she built was returning.

 

A quiet hum vibrates against the back of her neck, and Asami looks back at the portal in time to see two more figures shuffling out of the light. Her faith crashes back into her, throwing what was left of her breath out of her lungs, and Korra walks slowly towards her, half-carrying Kuvira but finding Asami’s wide eyes immediately.


	5. Chapter 5

_I had a dream last night and when I opened my eyes_

_Your shoulder blade, your spine were shorelines in the moon light_

_New worlds for the weary, new lands for the living_

_I could make it if I tried_

_I closed my eyes I kept on swimming_

 

Asami buries her father the day before Varrick and Zhu Li’s wedding. She doesn’t tell anyone because she’s not actually burying him-- there’s nothing left to bury, his body lost in the wreckage of the city-- but she has a plain stone column installed in her backyard for him anyways and sits in the grass to stare at it.

 

The sun is starting to set behind her when footsteps in the grass pull her out of the tired trance she’s been sitting in. Korra sits beside her, shoulder pressing gently into Asami’s. Asami leans against her, curling to press her forehead into Korra’s shoulder.

 

“How are your ribs?” Korra asks eventually.

 

“Okay.”

 

“I brought you something,” Korra adds.

 

“What?”

 

Korra shifts, one arm still around Asami’s waist, and she digs into her pants pocket. “You might hate it, but--” She cuts herself off and opens her fist, a lump of metal sitting in her hands.

 

“Uh,” Asami says. “Thanks?”

 

Korra flushes and flicks her fingers, and the metal hovers above her palm, rotating slowly. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted to do anything for him-- and I know you said you don’t want to talk about it yet, and I really don’t want to pressure you to, but I thought--” She pulls her other hand free, rolling the metal in the air between her hands, fingers working carefully, and the metal stretches and compresses and twists until--

 

“Oh,” Asami breathes out. She reaches without meaning to, and Korra lets the metalbent figurine of Hiroshi drop into Asami’s hand. “Korra, I--”

 

“If you don’t want it, I understand,” Korra says hurriedly. “I just--wanted to do something.”

 

“Thank you,” Asami says with a sniff. She curls back into Korra’s side and clings to her without meaning to. Korra holds on just as tight, fingers gripping into Asami’s jacket. “Can you stay here tonight?”

 

“Of course,” Korra mumbles into her shoulder.

 

Asami wakes up in the middle of the night, heart ricocheting in her chest as she watches her father die again and again, the scene parading on the inside of her eyelids. She manages to open her eyes, staring at her dark ceiling and breathing heavily, but she’s still locked in an ejected parachute, reaching out but never far enough, the weight of _maybe_ wrapping around her chest and seeping into her lungs, suffocating her and--

 

She looks to her right, and Korra is sprawled on her stomach, dead asleep and snoring softly. Moonlight fits over the solid width of her shoulders and the strong line of her spine, burning her scars silver and white against brown skin. Asami drags herself onto her side, pulls the blankets back up to her shoulders, and reaches out to curl her fingers carefully around Korra’s wrist. Her heartbeat rumbles through the scar tissue and anchors Asami back into the present, lulling her to sleep.

 

A day later, Varrick and Zhu Li are married. A day later, Asami is ready to talk about her father. A day later, Korra asks if they can leave, and Asami says yes.

 

Leaving is built into her bones, and she follows Korra into the spirit world without looking back.


End file.
